A new scam

On Monday I received the following in an e-mail:

Hi, Do you have an Amazon account? Thanks

It was from Lee and seemed to come from the husband of a woman who serves on a board with me. It thought it was a strange question, but I replied:

A basic account, not one of the enhanced ones. Why?

The reply back was:

Alright, am trying to get an Amazon E-gift card for my niece it’s her birthday but I don’t know what’s wrong with my amazon account it’s not going through and have called Amazon but it has not been resolved yet, can you please help me purchase an Amazon E-gift card over there from your amazon account? Let me know if you can handle this for me so i can send you my niece email address. Am only looking to spend $200 on it, I will reimburse you back as soon as possible.  You can do this from your non-prime account also.

Thank you once again

It did not sound right so I e-mailed the woman I knew and asked if it was legit.  She replied that it definitely was not legit. She said that her husband had been hacked and had lost all his emails and addresses. Since then they have been getting other scam e-mails that involve Amazon.

I thought it was clever in that it taps into people's willingness to help others. But if you think about it a bit, it does not make much sense.

Other than that, not much is happening because everything is shut down. I did apply for an absentee ballot for the upcoming primary by phoning the clerk's office. I got an application in the mail which I filled out and took to the drop box inside the first set of doors at the Court House. They have a new and improved box, not the one I pictured a week or so ago.

YNG is making face masks with their 3-D printers. The Rensselaer Republican had a nice article about them in its Saturday edition.

I noticed some little flowers in a yard this week.

It is Siberian Squill. It is not native and in some places has become invasive.

The grass is greening up and the maples are blooming but it is not warm enough yet to put away the winter coats or the snow shovel.

The Town Mall lot: what used to be there (Updated)

The half block that was engulfed in fire last year is now mostly empty, the exception being the Langley Insurance building. Some of the past history of that half block can be seen in the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

(Update: When I first published this, I misidentified the color code. The key to the color code is here. Blue is concrete or concrete block. Green indicates a special fire hazard.)

The first map for Rensselaer was published in 1886. What is now Kellner Street was then Cornelia Street. Yellow is a wooden structure, green blue is cement or cement block, and red is brick. There were two dwellings on the half block, and they remain throughout the series, as does the blacksmith shop. On the right there is a small carpenter shop and and even smaller print shop. There is no evidence of the alley.

 A few years later in 1893 a substantial brick building has been built housing agricultural implements. There is another small carpenter shop in the middle of the half block. There may be an alley; there are no longer buildings sited in what is now an alley.

 Six years later in 1899 the brick building is a billiards and bowling alley. The two green carpenter shops are gone, though one of the buildings may still stand but may be less of a fire risk with a new use. A business selling coal and wood is now occupying the middle of the block.

 Five years later in 1904 the billiards and bowling alley is gone and the brick building is being used for storage. The coal and wood business has greatly expanded and is also selling feed.

 There is not a lot of change in the 1909 map other than the brick building is now a furniture store. The coal yard may be called Mains and Hamilton. One oddity, there is a building labeled "dove cage" along Cornelia.

 The next map is twelve years later and it shows big changes. The coal yard is gone, replaced with a cement block building with a brick facing selling farm implements. Next to it are an auto supply and an auto repair shop. The brick building is now furniture and undertaking. I wonder if this is Wright's business.

There is a later version of the Sanborn map that the Rensselaer Library has but it is not now accessible.

All the wooden structures and the blacksmith shop were later demolished. The old Sears building that became the Town Mall was not a single building but a collection of buildings joined together. I suspect that most of the red and blue above were part of the Town Mall.

The source for these maps is here.

For reference, below is the picture of the lot from google maps. (It has not yet updated to a date after the fire.)

The "angry birds" mural was painted on the alley end of the building that was built between 1909 and 1921. I have put a picture of it as the header of this blog in my attempt to keep the memory of it alive. The original brick building had a basement, which was clear after it burned. Much of the rest of the structure had a concrete floor that took a while to break up and truck away.

One of the businesses that was displaced as a result of the fire has a new location. Amerimac is at 619 N. McKinley, across Vine from the Marathon station.

I noticed that the Marathon station had gas at $189.9.

 A CSX crew was stationed at the Cullen Street rail crossing. Looking at the markings on the ground, I guessed that they were going to replace the crossing lights with gates. I asked a worker to check and he confirmed that that is what they were going to do.

 Finally, many years I post pictures of crocuses because to me they are a first sign of spring. My crocuses have been blooming for about a week.
In a few months I will be posting a picture of asters, the first sign of on-coming winter.

Since almost everything has been canceled, expect a few more history posts in the upcoming weeks.

Unusual and somber

The City Council meeting on 3-23-2020 was unusual and somber. There was no invocation or pledge or citizen comments. The meeting immediately advanced to the agenda by approving minutes. Later the Mayor made no comments nor were there comments from the Council members or from the superintendents. Only four of the superintendents were present; six others had been excused by the Mayor. There was only one other member of the public attending.

The Council approved two ordinances. The first standardized late-payment penalties across utilities. A customer has 17 days to pay before the penalty kicks in and it will be 10% of the first $3 and 3% of the rest of the bill for each utility bill. The penalties will not apply if there is a declaration of emergency as we presently have.

The second ordinance passed was an amendment to the salary ordinance. It allows non-essential personnel to be paid for working at home during emergencies. Employees can either be doing work or they can be on call at home, able to come in within two hours. The ordinance will have to be renewed every ten days. There were a lot of questions and the discussion of this ordinance took more time than any other item.

An electric rate tracker of a $1.15 decrease per 1000 kilowatt hours was approved.

The City had sought quotes from five companies for removing 68 trees in right-of-ways. Almost all are dead ash trees. Only one company responded, with a quote of $58,700. There followed a discussion about finances. The shut down currently in effect will reduce people's incomes so the state and local taxes they pay will be reduced. Some time in the future the City will be getting smaller draws of money from those taxes, and spending will have to be reduced. After a brief discussion, the Council approved having the project coordinator talk to the tree cutting company to see if one half of the trees could be cut now and the other half when it was clear that funds would be available.

It was mentioned that the State is cutting grants. The City had been planning to submit an OCRA grant for downtown revitalization but that is on hold. The Community Crossings grant program may be cut back and the City will not submit this round because of the need to provide matching funds. And plans to purchase an aerial truck for the Fire Department are also on hold. The Fire Department was given permission to join a cooperative called HGAC Buy. The Lafayette fire department is a member and said that it had saved them money on aerial trucks. When the time comes that the purchase of new fire department equipment is possible, this group may help.

Two FMAL (family leave?) requests were approved.

The City is losing money from generating electricity at the power plant. It must sell that power to IMPA, which resells it and the payments made by IMPA to Rensselaer are not enough to make the plant profitable. Rensselaer currently is the only municipality in IMPA that generates power. The City sought advice from their financial advisor Baker-Tilly and, as a result of their report, the Council voted to stop generation as of May 30, 2020. The full implications of that decision were not spelled out.

The meeting adjourned at about 6:40. The next meeting will be done electronically.

We got enough snow on Sunday to cover the grass but fortunately it melted on the streets. By evening on Monday almost all had melted.

Sparling Avenue

I found the obituary of Joseph Sparling in the 1908 Republican. I have long wondered why Sparling Avenue was named as it is. I wondered if Sparling had been an important figure. He was one of the first of European descent born in the County. As the map from 1909 shows, he lived along the road that bears his name and I suspect that is why it bears the name.

That land eventually became part of the SJC property. Searching through the Saint Joseph's College Chronology by Charles Robbins, C.PP.S., I learned that the Eiglesbach property was purchased by the College in 1917. I could not find any mention of a purchase of the Sparling property. However, in 1932 the College purchased the Frank Kanne farm, and that was the land that in 1909 was owned by the the sons of Joseph Sparling. Father Robbins noted, "On the farm were a barn and a frame house across the road from where Bennettt Hall now stands. The farm with the buildings was bought from $15,000. The house became in the year 1953 a student residence known as the "White House". Later it housed an experimental psychology laboratory, but was standing idle at the time it burned to the ground in 1980."

I recall its use as a psychology lab. A professor who stayed only a few years conducted research using pigeons. The building stood south of where the Jasper County Youth Center now stands. Below is a picture that I found in the 1981 College yearbook.

The son of Joseph, Samuel, is mentioned in this post.

Access denied

The County Council meeting on Tuesday night may be the last County meeting that the public will be able to attend for some time. The Commissioners meeting in April will be closed to public attendance but will be streamed on-line and the public may be able to submit questions. That announcement and others were the highlights as the meeting served as a way for the County to announce what it is doing as a result of the Chinese Corona Virus outbreak.

Over 8000 people have seen the video of the first part of the meeting, which was streamed on Facebook. (One could say it went viral.) During the meeting there were as many as 650 watching live. So I will save a summary of that part of the meeting to the end of this post and talk about what happened after the feed was shut down and most of the people attending the meeting left.

The Council approved an additional appropriation of $10,000 for Community Services. The Sheriff gave the Council copies of the jail report and then told them that he had found the funds needed to purchase the Spillman dispatch software so he would not need any additional appropriations from the Council. He is still taking funds for maintenance of the software and that cost will increase as more departments join in using it. There are lengthy training periods ahead and June 2021 is the target date to begin using it.

The County Clerk wants as many people as possible to vote by absentee ballot in the upcoming primary election. To get an absentee ballot, call the Clerk's office at (219) 866-4926.

The assistant Coroner said that the Coroner's office was getting daily updates from the CDC. Traditional funerals are probably not going to be happening for a while, which may be painful for friends and relatives of the deceased.

The County is working with the newspaper and the radio station to keep the public informed with what is happening.

The meeting opened with statements by several people. Commissioner Culp stated that we are in uncharted waters and we do not know what the next steps will be. He introduced Dr. Nelson, the County Health Officer. She advised people to stay at home as much as possible, to wash their hands frequently, to maintain social distance and avoid shaking hands. People should meet on-line but should not trust social media. People with health issues and the elderly (those over 60) are at higher risk. Debra Nagel from the Health Department repeated the advice to stay at home as much as possible. The Health Department has suspended its vaccinations.

Next Karen Wilson, Director of Emergency Management, said that the Corona Virus has been declared a national emergency. Local governments will be able to get reimbursement for funds spent on virus protection but they need to keep records and receipts.

Kendall Culp spoke next and announced that the public no longer would have access to virtually all County buildings and offices. One exception is the lobby of the jail and the other is limited access to the Court rooms. Property Tax installments are due in May and they can be mailed or dropped off at several banks. Employees of the Court House will have to enter through the public entrance and they will have their temperature taken. (It is with a ear probe--all those attending the County Council meeting had their temperatures taken) If the temperature is 100.4 or greater, they will told to leave. In three weeks the situation will be re-evaluated but until then access is closed to the public.

Here again is the video from the start of the meeting.

The County website is at https://www.jaspercountyin.gov/.

At the entrance to the Court House on Tuesday night;

Signs

The great toilet paper panic has emptied the shelves of some Rensselaer stores. Despite limiting customers to only two packs, the shelves were almost empty at Strack and Van Til.

 I think this is where the toilet paper is supposed to be at Dollar Tree.

 Walgreens and Save-a-Lot still have toilet paper. Save-A-Lot was limiting purchases of bottled water, but they seemed to have quite a bit in stock.

Restaurants have shut their dining rooms. They will serve take-out but you cannot order and sit in the restaurant and eat the meal. The sign below is at McDonalds.

 The Library is closed. If you have books to return and do not want to touch the handled of the book return, you can use your feet to open the doors.

 The Fendig Gallery is closed. The Middle School Art exhibit is scheduled to open this week and I wonder if the public will ever get an opportunity to see it.

City Hall does not want you to come inside.

 Court House cleaning has been taken up a notch. Last night I went to the Planning Commission meeting and there were two women doing a very thorough cleaning, even wiping the handrails on the stairs.

There is a County Council meeting tonight and it will be live streamed on Facebook. If you are interested, go to the Facebook page of Kendall Culp, Jasper County Commissioner.

Thursday is the Vernal Equinox. It is very special this year because it is something that will not be canceled.

People are being forced to change the way they do things because of the Chinese virus. Some of them may find that the new ways they discover are better than their old ways. It will be interesting to see if there are detectable long-run changes that result for the shutting down of so many things.

Not all the signs are depressing. Gas prices are down. They are below $2.00 in some parts of the state.

 Daffodils are getting ready to bloom. I suspect crocuses are already blooming, but I have not seen any yet.

 Walmart was ready to fill its garden center on Saturday as light snow fell most of the day. Fortunately, most of it melted as soon as it fell.

The R&M Market is now permanently closed. If they had waited a couple of weeks, they probably could have sold a lot of their merchandise that they ended up moving.

The Law Office of Lori S. James now has window signs. 

I think I have seen this sign before.

 Here is the back.

Have you noticed the murals behind eMbers on the second floor? 

 The lady on the back of the Yallaly building now can watch a dumpster being loaded. Demolition inside the building next door has started as part of the renovation of that building.

As mentioned above, the Jasper County Plan Commission met Monday evening. The interesting item was a rezone from A1 to I1 for a 117-acre tract to the east of Advance Auto in Carpenter Township. There is a distribution center of some kind interested in locating there, but it is also considering other sites. The distribution center would not use the entire property but the rezone to I1 would make it easier to attract other future enterprises. The area will probably be annexed soon by Remington, and any future rezoning would be their responsibility. The Board recommended to the Commissioners to approve the rezone.

If the company interested in the site chooses it, construction will start this summer.

The Board also approved and sent to the Commissioners adjusted fees for the Planning Office that are comparable to those charged in area Counties. Jasper County fees were lower than those being charged by other counties.

Redevelopment

The Rensselaer Redevelopment Commission met on Thursday afternoon. This is a body that oversees the Rensselaer TIF districts and makes decisions regarding them. They last met in October to consolidate two TIF districts. (See here.)

The revenue generated from improvements in the TIF districts flows to a special pot that can be used to finance improvements in the district. The Rensselaer fire station was financed by bonds that are backed by this kind of revenue. Annually the combined TIF districts generate about $790,000 of revenue but about $375,000 of that is needed to pay interest and principle on two bond issues.

The first item that was discussed did not involve new bonds but rather money raised from the bonds issued to fund the fire station. There is about $97,000 that was not spent and it can only be spent on the fire station or improvements to it. The proposal before the Commission was to use the money to install infrastructure for a new training facility on almost two acres of land that Marion Township recently purchased adjacent to the fire station and behind Kirby Risk and Dollar General.

Fire fighters have to undergo extensive training and at present that means trips to either Lafayette or Valparaiso. The biggest advantage of having a local training facility would be a reduction in the time spent on the road and the fuel costs of the travel. The cost of some of the things that would go into this training center would be borne by the State but there are other costs that must be paid locally. One of the things that are used in these facilities are converted shipping containers and they are provided by the State.

The members of the Commission had a lot questions. They wondered if this was the best use of the land and they had many questions about costs. Eventually they passed a motion to allow the money left from the past bond funding to be used on the training facility.

If you want to know more about this facility, there will be a public hearing on the matter at the April 14 Rensselaer BZA meeting at 7:00 pm.

The second item was downtown revitalization. The City would like to begin the revitalization by redoing the brick streets around the Court House Square. Included in this project would be replacing the utility lines that lie beneath the streets. The City is preparing with KIRPC a grant proposal (this may be on the agenda for an upcoming City Council meeting) to help fund this project, and the project will not go forward if the grant is not funded. However, the amount of the grant will not be enough to do all the work involved in this project. The City's financial advisor from Baker Tilly (which acquired Umbaugh and Associates last year) was on hand to explain how big of a bond issue the City could float to help finance the project. He ran through the numbers and said that with an annual bond payments of $250,000 a year funded from TIF revenues, the City could borrow about $3,365,000. However, various costs and fees must be paid from that so there would only be about $2,860,000 that could be spent on actual construction. The current estimate of the project is $2.5 million and the City is hoping for a grant of $600,000. The Commission voted to move forward with the project, but there are still other approvals that will be needed for the project to proceed.

I stopped in R&M Market on Friday. Most of the shelves are empty, but the refrigerated areas are still stocked. And they still had toilet paper. Have you joined the great toilet-paper panic of 2020 and stocked up? I can see some sense in buying toilet paper, but I do not understand the people who are stocking up on bottled water. The next few weeks should be interesting as many events are shutting down. Area schools are having extended spring breaks.

Another sign of spring: As I left the library on Friday afternoon wearing my winter coat, a young girl dressed in a tee shirt and shorts rode up on bike.

Plane crash and City Council (Updated)

Checking my e-mail on Wednesday morning, I found this in an message from the Jasper County Airport:

Here is preliminary information regarding an aircraft incident that occurred this morning in the vicinity of Jasper County Airport. 

6:52 am cdt- Call from Chicago Center asking if an aircraft made it on the ground. They cleared an aircraft to make an instrument approach and haven’t heard back from the aircraft. We did not have the aircraft on the ground at the airport. 

7:04 am cdt- Call from 911 dispatch asking if we were expecting an aircraft and that a report of a possible crash behind Dollar General came in. 

7:10 am cdt- I arrived to find police, sheriff, fire, and ems on scene. They confirmed 1 injured person was on board and was being transported to a hospital. 

7:23 am cdt- FAA field office was contacted 

7:28 am cdt- NTSB was contacted 

No other information is available at this time. All other updates will come from City of Rensselaer and Rensselaer Fire Department.

I went to the area and found three police cars parked at the west end of Vine Street. Faintly visible through the heavy fog in a field about a third of mile to the north was what looked like a backhoe. I took a few pictures but as you can see, they do not show much.

 From a slightly different angle. I think the white bit on the right may be the plane.

I am sure there will be much more information later.

The Rensselaer City Council met Monday evening. It approved the gas tracker reduction of a bit under 4¢ per hundred cubic feet before moving on to the pole rental contract with NITCO. The price of pole rental remains the same and the main change was that NITCO will extend service to Brookside Park. That will add $75 to the City's monthly bill but it will add a link from the security cameras there to the Police Department.

Next up was a discussion of the Safe Halloween Event, otherwise known as trunk or treat. It will continue to be held at the Fair Grounds and the best night, the one that does not conflict with other rental events at the Fair Grounds, is a Sunday night. This year Halloween falls on a Saturday, so the Safe Halloween Event organizers asked the City Council to declare that trick-or-treat hours will be from 5-8 on October 25. The Council approved the last Sunday of October to be the trick-or-treat day for Rensselaer for 2020 to 2022. The event spends about $2500 for candy each year and received about $900 from a bar-stool golf event. The Council gave them $250 from the public relations fund.

Rock the Arts wants to move from Potawatomi Park this year and have the festival as part of Mural Week. It will be held on July 4, which is a Saturday, and the location will be the alley between Front Street and Van Rensselaer Street. It was unclear exactly how much of Front and Van Rensselaer Streets would need to be closed as well, so the Council approved the request to close alley and streets pending review and approval by the City's Project Coordinator, Jerry Lockridge.

The Fire Department has finished compiling the specs for a new aerial truck and requested permission from the Council to get bids or quotes. The Council approved. The Council also approved a motion to allow the Police Department to commit to helping the Sheriff's Department purchase new dispatch software. The City is required to file a wastewater budget with either a state or federal entity by March 1 and it has done so. The Council approved the budget it submitted.

Clean-up week will be May 4-9 and the town-wide garage sale will be May 2. Pipeline awareness and the Gas Department open house will be May 1. A topic for the next meeting will be well-head protection.

Tuesday night saw another City meeting, this of the Rensselaer Board of Zoning Appeals. The topic of the meeting was a conditional use application for cat and dog boarding on land located near the theater in the Drexel Industrial Park. Apparently the zoning code is not clear about what veterinary services are allowed on this land given its zoning, so to make sure there are no problems in the future, the issue was brought to the BZA. The petitioner, Dr Mallory, currently operates a veterinary clinic on North Cullen with pet boarding. She would like to move the clinic and eventually the boarding to this site. The zoning allows the clinic, but she does not want to build unless she can also in the future add a boarding facility. The item passed unanimously.

There will be another BZA and probably also a Planning Committee meeting on April 14 that will deal with something that is Fire Department related

I noticed a new sign going up on what was Fiesta Salons in the College Mall. It will now be a SuperCuts. SuperCuts is a franchise and Fiesta Salons may also be.

I have begun to moderate all comments left on this blog because I am getting far more spam comments than legitimate comments. (Nine comments have been posted since Feb 24 and all have been spam.) The spam seems to be part of search engine optimization: pages that have the more sites linking to them get displayed before similar pages with fewer sites linking to them. So I am getting links put in the comments that direct people to pages in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and other places that have no possible connection to the topics this blog writes about. I encourage comments, but you will not see your comment immediately appear because I am hoping that moderation will kill off most of the spam. You probably never see it because I delete it immediately when I see it. But it usually stays up for a few hours. Now it will never appear. I am sorry for the inconvenience that this may cause to legitimate comments.

UPDATE: Below is a picture of the plane from Vine Street. There is one spot along the street where a small hill does not obscure the view.

R&M is closing it Rensselaer store and removing all the merchandise, which will be taken to its Brookston and Monticello stores. There is not much left to buy and this may be its last week.

Update 2: More on the crash from the Rensselaer Republican here.

Planning for the future

Signs of spring keep appearing. Last week I saw several robins and several turkey vultures. I am always excited to see the return of the turkey vultures both because it means spring is coming and because they are very graceful as they soar overhead.

The Jasper County Tourism Commission met on Friday morning. The funding request that they considered was from the Fountain Park Chautauqua, which will be celebrating its 125 anniversary this summer. Its first year was 1895 and it now has 70 cottages and a 30 room hotel that dates from the very early days of its history. The Chautauqua movement started as training for Sunday School teachers but has over the years changed to be mostly a celebration of the arts. The Remington Chautauqua is open to the public with a $5.00 daily entry fee. This year it will run from July 18 to August 3.

The Chautauqua requested $2500 to help pay for country singer Nich Lynch from Chicago. (Website here.) He appeared on American Idol sometime in the past. After some discussion and mention that the Council was cutting everyone this year, the members approved a grant of $2000.

Another item on the Chautauqua entertainment schedule this year is a retired professor talking on the history of toilet paper.

The Tourism office and JCEDO is preparing new trifolds promoting Jasper County. There was mention that IDOT is planning a welcome center for the rest area at mile marker 230. The focus of the exhibits will be the Grand Kankakee Marsh. (The rest area plans were mentioned in an October 2019 post.)

There was also discussion of other ways that the area could highlight its pre-settlement history and habitat. Residents who collect Indian artifacts know that this area had large Indian populations, some of which may have been seasonal, in the past but there is very little public recognition of that history and it is something that might have a tourism angle.

A group in Northeast Indiana is trying to do public murals in that part of the state and there was discussion if their efforts might be coordinated in some way to help the local mural project.

Speaking of local murals, the RENARTWLK has a website (here, note that it is a .org not a .com site) and is currently trying to raise money to do a round two of murals. The total budget is $30,000 and $10,000 is being raised from the public. The campaign is not quite to 50% of that $10,000 goal. (See here.)

A silver lining from the fire is that I can now take a decent picture of the mural on Janet's Kitchen. On the other hand, the view of the back of the buildings is not attractive even with a few murals there. Perhaps the second round of murals will greatly improve the view.

On Sunday Rensselaer had its second annual International Woman's Day event. It was well attended, both the morning talks and the afternoon boutique market.

Finally, as I was going to the Tourism meeting on Friday, I noticed movers taking furniture into the former PMC Bank Building. I assume that was for the Probation office, which should now be out of the old annex and in the basement of its new building.

More March odds and ends

The Charlie Roberts auto dealership has announced that it is closed. This is not a surprise because several months ago the property was listed for sale.

Also closing is the Hazelden Country Club near Brook, which has been open for more than a century. The owners had sought a buyer and had not found one. They have begun to sell equipment. Today's issue of the Rensselaer Republican has more information about the closing.

The law office of Riley and Ahler has moved to 209 W Washington, Suite C. It is an interior office with no windows. Mike Riley has mostly retired but a new lawyer joined the firm in January. Jacob Ahler is the attorney for the City of Rensselaer, the Jasper County Council, and the Jasper County Drainage Board.

A couple of banners across US 231 announce a local International Woman's Day event on March 8 at Embers. There are morning talks and in the afternoon booths by businesses owned by women.

The Rensselaer Park Board met Monday evening in the City Council chambers to hear a presentation by an Eagle Scout who wants to make some improvements to Hal Gray Park. He wants to install a 30 foot flag pole, do a bit of landscaping, and paint or stain the gazebo. He has to raise some money for the project. The Board gave him their blessing.

Baseball and tee ball enrollment for the summer are down and this seems to be a national trend. Soccer plans to have four soccer camps this summer. The new fields at Monnett should be ready for the in-house teams and the traveling teams will continue to use Brookside Park. RBI baseball would like to add 80-foot bases at Roth Field in Brookside Park so that they can host home games.

In park updates, the concession stand at the Blacker Fields is mostly completed. When we get drier weather, dirt in the big pile north of the fields will be moved back onto the fields. There is a lot of concrete work that will be done soon. The iron-work for the entryways for the Monnett-Staddon Park is being finished and will eventually be installed. The dog park will be getting two old fire hydrants that the City has available. A granite bench commemorating John Egan has been completed and is awaiting a concrete foundation before it is installed in Milroy Park.

Last year park programs served over 1000 people. This year the old programs will continue and there will be some new ones. One of the first, which comes from a suggestion by a member of the public, will be a Spring Trail that will be much like the themed Scarecrow and Christmas Tree Trails. For a small entry fee and some creative work, local businesses and organizations can advertise their presence. The theme can be Easter or spring or arbor day or anything thing else spring related. Details will be available soon.

Other events on the drawing boards are cup-in-hand kickball, a children's garden, a nature series with 4-H, a grand opening of the Foundation Park (which I keep calling Staddon-Monnett), and workshops on invasive species.

There is always a need for volunteers to help with the programs and high-school kids welcome to volunteer. Also, if you have ideas for programs you would like to see in the parks, Mrs Hall would like to hear from you.

This Jasper County Historical Society has a big event coming on April 25, the dedication of the Helenor Alter Davisson Interpretive Center. The event will feature re-enactors at four or five different locations that are connected to Helenor, including her childhood home near Remington and her grave in he Sandridge Cemetery several miles north of Rensselaer. Helenor was the first woman ordained by any of the denominations that now make up the United Methodist Church.

The Historical Society's Cemetery Walk committee has begun meeting and is finalizing which residents of Weston Cemetery will be featured in September's Third Annual Cemetery Walk. The rain or shine date is September 19.

Start of March meetings 2020

There were several items related to electrical power generation on the agendas of the Commissioners and the Drainage Board meetings on Monday. The rezone from A1 to I2 recommended by the Plan Commission for a proposed electrical plant generating with natural gas was approved. A representative for the plant said that they might find out this week if they have been selected by NIPSCO as a supplier.

Later in the meeting the Commissioners voted to oppose an amendment offered in the State Legislature that would cap property values of solar farms at three times the value of the land when used for agriculture. Senator Buchanan offered the amendment when one of the Counties he represents complained that a potential solar project had pulled out because they feared the property taxes would be too high. However, Jasper County has already given a tax abatement for a potential solar farm that only makes sense in the absence of this amendment.

The Drainage Board meeting had a request to vacate a regulated drain from a representative of a company called Solar Pack. The drain in question is a tile that was installed in 1917 and no one is sure if it still works. It goes through property that Solar Pack would like to use for solar panels and it would affect placement because the tile would have a 75 foot easement. This project is the potential solar farm in the Kniman area. The concern of the Board was that there might be private drains that connect to this regulated drain. There will be a public hearing on the matter at the June 1 meeting.

There were many other items discussed at Monday's meetings. The Commissioners accepted the negative recommendation for the rezone from A1 to A4 for an event venue in Wheatfield Township. There was a comment that the person who requested the rezone may be looking for a different location. A request from Community Corrections to change vendors for electronic monitoring was accepted. There are three vacancies on the Corrections Board and none were filled. Community Corrections needs to update its fire alarms because they are obsolete and the Commissioners delayed action until they can determine if it would be best if all County properties use  the same vendor.

Little Cousin Jasper was given permission to use the Court House lawn for its festival on September 11-12-13. A featured attraction this year will be a tight-rope walker. The Commissioners also approved use of the lawn for the Colts event on June 3 if the planners decide that the lawn is the best place for it. The event will take place in the evening and might bring in between 1000 and 3000 people. The Rensselaer Farmers Market was granted approval from May 2 to October 30.

The Planning Department wants to update the County UDO that is 11 years old. It requested and was granted $10,000 to contract with Purdue University to get started by gathering data needed for the update.

The Sheriff has two merit deputies who have left or will leave for more lucrative jobs and was given permission to replace them with people working in the jail. Then the Commissioners approved hiring two new jail officers. A long discussion followed about software. The Sheriff had issued a request for proposals and had received two responses, one from Spillman and the other from Central Square. Spillman has high initial costs but low annual costs and Central Square has low initial costs but high annual costs, so they are not easily compared. The Sheriff would have liked permission to proceed with Spillman but the Commissioners were not ready to approve that. Instead they told him to take the matter to the County Council meeting and explain to them exactly how it will be financed.

The bike route discussed at last month's meeting was approved; it is part of a longer bike route though Indiana and other states. The last item of note that was discussed was golf cart usage in subdivisions. After some back and forth with members of the audience, it was decided that Commissioner's attorney will revise the draft ordinance to include an annual sticker with a fee that will be granted when an owner certifies that his or her golf cart is street legal (headlight, brake lights, and turn signals).

The Drainage Board meeting had a sizable crowd who were mostly there for a public hearing on increasing the maintenance fund for the King Lawler Wuerthner drainage. This is a small watershed just west of Rensselaer. One person who spoke complained that FEMA had put his house into the flood plain. He was told that FEMA has done that to quite a few County residents and the proper response is to hire a surveyor to show that the residence has enough elevation to not need flood insurance. After several other comments, some of which said that work needed to be done because water was no longer draining well, the Board approved a fee of $10 per acre and $25 per lot.

Next was a bid opening for contracted spray maintenance. There were two bids, with the low bid about 60% of the high bid. The low bid was accepted.

KV Schools plans to build a Halftime Building that will house lockers and some offices. It will add a trivial amount of runoff to that created by the existing impervious surfaces and the drainage plan was approved. KV may build an activities center in the future.

Finally, Remington is extending a water main to the White County line and will cross a County drain. It will be drilled five feet below the bottom of that drain, which received Drainage Board approval.

In the evening the Rensselaer Park Board met, but this post is long enough so that and other items will be the subject to another post.